Soap Makers Help!

[arabookworm]

Hi everyone!
I have finally read the whole thread, and I think that I might be ready to try making my own soap. I was thinking of starting with olive oil soap.

I wanted to know if anyone has tried using mint to flavor soap? if you did how did you do it? how did it turn out?

 

[Backyard Buddies]

Welcome arabookworm! Glad to have you with us.

I haven't tried mint yet, but I certainly will be doing so as the garden is producing more of it. I have used rosemary and it certainly DID impart a scent to the soap.

I had previously made a lavender soap and had just an ounce of scent left. I wanted to use some garden botanicals in the soap, so I took a good amount of rosemary and steeped it in the olive oil for a couple of days. Periodically, I'd warm it up just a bit in the microwave, shake it, etc. Then, I used that strained oil as my olive oil in the soap. Additionally, I put some in with the lye/water but next time I think I'll skip that step since it altered the color of the soap more than I would have liked. When I added the 1 ounce of lavender scent at trace, I also added some dried and ground lavender buds and some dried and ground rosemary.

Although it wasn't my biggest seller (probably because of the slightly 'off' color) so far everyone says it is their favorite. The combined scent of the lavender and the rosemary gives it a bit of an earthy smell to tone down the sweetness of the lavender. The guys especially like it and have requested that I make that as their shave soap.

 

[ninjapoodles]

Quote:
Mints are my absolute favorite scents. EVER. They blend well with citrus, rosemary, and lots of other things. Just start sniffing and trying!

 

[chiknwhisperer]

I unmolded my cucumber soap tonight

I can't to try it! I'll try to put pics up tomorrow

 

[arabookworm]

so what color does olive oil soap end up being?

 

[MullersLaneFarm]

My 100% OO soaps are an off white in color, but that is because I ue milk.

My 100% OO soaps made with water are bright white (and that is using pomace OO)

 

[chiknwhisperer]

The Castile soap that is just made is white. It has been out of the mold for four days now and it is getting whiter then when it came out. I like it. I poste a couple of pics a page or two back you can look at.

 

[smom1976]

I just found 101 oz EVOlive Oil for $19.77 at SAMS! I could get two of these and use one and half of one for my mold, and do a castelle soap...

That would be cool..

then I am thinking that I am going to try doing shapes in my soaps.. Great idea..

ETA: I JUST LOVE THIS THREAD!

 

[ninjapoodles]

Quote:
Ditto.

 

[Backyard Buddies]

Woo hooo!

I finally had an opportunity to make my Rose Milk soap! I sort of combined methods for the milk and so far it looks like I'll have a nice light colored bar! Yay!

I had frozen the goat milk and had slightly less than half what was needed for the recipe. That was intended, though. The other half of the liquid was a distilled rosewater that I made with roses from the church garden. What I did was to place the milk in a metal pan in an ice bath, sprinkle it with 1/3 of the lye, let it melt some, sprinkle a little more, added some of the slushy rosewater, then alternated until I had used up all of the lye and rosewater.

I had tweaked my recipe to raise the lineoleic FA by more than double my old recipe and took the palmitic down. I also increased my bubbles and conditioning, something I was wanting to do. Can't wait to see how it comes out.

Oh, and I used the bigger heart shaped silicone molds (the ones that I found at Target) for some of the recipe. These were my first molded soaps, so I hope I did this correctly.

How long should the molded soaps stay in the mold?